|
by Paul R. Hollrah, Advisosr to Lincoln Heritage Institute
What is a Harry Reid? That’s hard to say. We’re told that Harry is a native of a small mining town in Nevada, called Searchlight. So what’s that all about? Mines? Searchlights? It sounds an awful lot like Harry’s hometown might be a mining camp staffed with convict labor. But I’m just guessing.
Harry earned his undergraduate degree from Southern Utah State College and from Utah State University before moving on to Washington. After arriving in Washington he joined the U.S. Capitol Police and enrolled at George Washington University Law School. Since Harry is a man of uncommonly nasty temperament, rattlesnake mean, the very idea of him strolling around the U.S. Capitol with a gun strapped to his hip is enough to make the blood run cold. Of course, the fact that a man who cannot tell the truth earned a law degree from a university named after a man who couldn’t tell a lie…is even more mind-boggling.
After graduating from George Washington, and armed with his newly-minted law degree, Harry returned to the West and entered politics. He served in the Nevada state legislature for one term before being elected lieutenant governor in 1970. Beginning in 1977 he headed the Nevada Gaming Commission, a position where the graft is apparently much more lucrative than in the lieutenant governor’s office.
Harry’s bio tells us that, during his years as head of the Gaming Commission, he received many death threats. However, it is unclear whether those threats were related to his job as head of the Gaming Commission, or if he was as insufferable then as he is now and some folks just thought the world would be a better place without him.
On one occasion, a man named Jack Gordon (who later married Latoya Jackson) offered Harry
a bribe. Harry tipped off the FBI and they decided to tape the transaction. However, when Gordon showed up with only $12,000, Harry wrapped his hands around Gordon’s throat and attempted to strangle him. Was Harry expecting more? No one seems to know. One thing is certain: Gordon can thank his lucky stars that the Capitol Police disarmed Harry before he left Washington.
Following his stint at the Nevada Gaming Commission Harry was elected to the U.S. House of Representatives in 1982. He served two terms in the House before moving up to the Senate in 1986. The rest is history.
As an example of how Harry views the political world, consider the recent outburst in which he had the effrontery to warn the President of the United States – the President of the United States, mind you, as if he were an equal – not to pardon the vice president’s chief of staff, “Scooter” Libby, who has not been convicted of a crime and probably never will be.
Yet, when a president of his own party, Bill Clinton, pardoned sixteen Puerto Rican terrorists in order to help his wife win a U.S. Senate seat, Harry saw nothing wrong or unusual about any of that. And when Clinton pardoned 140 felons in his last hours in the White House, including 28 drug dealers and 112 others convicted of crimes ranging from armed robbery to tax evasion, from racketeering to espionage, and from bribery to jury tampering, we didn’t hear a peep out
of Harry. He apparently thought that was just a fine Christian thing to do.
The trouble with Harry is that he is a Mormon. Mormons are, generally speaking, unusually kind and decent people. So, while the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints demands and expects that Harry be a decent and honorable fellow, he belongs to a political party where there is little or no premium placed on honesty, integrity, and decency.
To make matters worse, Harry’s colleagues have seen fit to make him their leader in the U.S. Senate. This places him in a position of being constantly at war with himself – trying to live up to the expectations of the Church, while his job demands that he never tell the truth and that he never act with honor and integrity. That’s not an easy thing to do. Ted Kennedy, John Kerry, Howard Dean, Chuckie Schumer, and the Clintons are all very good at it because they have no conscience, and because they’ve been at it much longer. Unlike Bill Clinton, Harry is not an unusually good liar…but he tries.
Each time we think the Democrats couldn’t possibly find a leader who is meaner, nastier, and more devoid of intellectual integrity than his predecessor, they always manage to outdo themselves. Harry Reid is living proof.
|
